Fitz's Rainbow
by aces
Summary: Fitz Kreiner, a guitar, and the last cigarette.


I'm not quite sure what point I wanted to make with this story--if there even was a point to be made. I just know I wanted to write something about Fitz and his guitar, so I did. And the song comes from the movie Finian's Rainbow--yes, the title of this story is a reference to that also, but in no way whatsoever is the story influenced by the movie. I only use the chorus of the song because that's the single part that really fits--oh, just read it. You'll see. J Standard disclaimer: characters aren't mine; I make no money off this; I just write to entertain and keep myself sane (though some would argue it's too late for that).  
  
Fitz's Rainbow  
  
Not long after Fitz had, in a way, rejoined the Doctor and his new TARDIS, he'd found the ballroom. It was when he'd been searching for the bathroom--he'd found it eventually, but not till after stumbling across a couple storage areas, a study with oak-pannelled walls and stained glass windows with impossible sunlight shining through, some dusty, deserted bedrooms, and...the ballroom.  
  
He'd swung open one of the innocuous white-roundelled doors and stood staring in the doorway. The room was long and wide, with high ceilings. No windows; the walls and floor were covered in red curtains and carpeting, and there were probably a dozen fantastic and intricate chandeliers hanging from the moulded ceiling, letting off a dazzling light. The thick carpeting cushioned his footsteps, the heavy curtains muffled his words; and yet, somehow, when he sang or played an instrument, the room always seemed to amplify the sound, make it fuller, more vibrant, more beautiful.  
  
He'd stepped more fully into the room that first time, his neck craned upward to take in the marvellous ceiling and chandeliers, and the grand double doors, of some rich dark wood and inlaid with gold, had closed behind him (having vastly different doors on one side from the other didn't surprise him, not in this ship). The room was regal, majestic, and yet it was also forlorn, mourning its loss of people. It should have been full of ladies and gents in posh eighteenth and nineteenth century clothes, dancing and gossiping and laughing, only instead it was completely deserted. The stifling silence was more eloquent than any sobbing could have been.  
  
So Fitz, unable to bear that silence, had taken pity on the room and tried to fill it with music, if not with people. The room seemed to accept the music gladly--Fitz swore he could hear a contented sigh breathe through the air around him the first time he played his guitar--but it still missed its dancing couples and gossiping groups.  
  
He came back to the ballroom whenever he had a chance, taking his guitar with him. It was a perfect practice room, if a bit on the gigantic side for only one player. Anyway, the other two didn't seem to know about the room--or at least, they never bothered him when he was in here. He could be alone with his music and his thoughts.  
  
He was in the ballroom now, his fingers absent-mindedly strumming guitar strings the way someone else's fingers would create a geometric shape, or tap out a rhythm on a tabletop. He was trying rather desperately to keep himself occupied. He only had one ciggie left.  
  
As soon as Fitz found his thoughts wandering, once again, to the alluring memory of the taste of tobacco, he forced himself to concentrate on what his fingers were doing, tried to make himself think of a particular song to play and sing.  
  
He started with some old favorites, very early Beatles and Buddy Holly, groups and singers he'd known before he'd ever met the Doctor. He moved onto later Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, stuff he'd heard while staying with Maddy, found snippets of songs he'd heard while in San Francisco in the early twenty-first century and bits of other songs he'd learned while on Hitchemus.  
  
Eventually his thoughts drifted again, and his fingers were left alone to pluck which melodies they pleased. He was lost in memories, Sam and the Doctor and his childhood and Faction Paradox and World War II and intelligent tigers and enchanted wolves. At one point he remembered his mother in their old flat, singing in her rusted voice, and his fingers instinctively found the chords to "Look to the Rainbow" even as his thoughts carried on to something else.  
  
But still, his thoughts kept coming back, more and more often, to that last wilted cigarette in the crumpled pack in his jeans. He was trying to hold off--who knew how long till they landed somewhere with tobacco, or a fairly reasonable facsimile? (Though Fitz would have preferred the real thing, remembering an uncomfortable and embarassing instance or two when he'd settled for something else. Not at all pleasant.) He was just about to give in and take the cigarette out when somebody said, "What was that song you were just playing?"  
  
Fitz looked up, startled, his fingers tangling in the guitar strings and causing a discordant twanging sound as he pulled himself into a more upright position. "Doctor! I didn't hear you come in."  
  
"Well, you were rather deeply involved in whatever you were thinking," the Doctor wryly replied as he crossed the vast room to join his friend. He sat down on the floor next to Fitz, stretching his long legs out ahead of him to study the tips of his shoes curiously. He seemed particularly fascinated by a scuff mark over his big toe on his right foot. "What was that song?" he asked again after a moment, glancing sideways at his companion.  
  
Fitz leant back against the wall again, though he didn't slump quite as much as he had before the Doctor had joined him, and struggled to recall what he'd been playing. It was difficult, as his fingers didn't hold the memory, and his playing had been something less than conscious. "Er, I'm not sure," Fitz had to admit at last, after playing a few random chords and snatches of songs. "Could you hum it?"  
  
"I can try," the Doctor replied and did so, in a soft voice that still carried throughout the vast room. Fitz couldn't remember if he'd ever heard the Doctor sing before, let alone hum. But then he made himself listen to the tune rather than the voice.  
  
"Oh! That one." Fitz started playing along with the Doctor's voice, adding the words he could remember when he got to the chorus. "Look, look! Look to the rainbow / follow it over the hill and stream / Look, look! Look to the rainbow / follow the fellow who follows a dream."  
  
"That's the one," the Doctor beamed. "I remember hearing that--oh, it must've been back in the late '40s, when I was visiting America. How do you know it?"  
  
Fitz shrugged. "My mum liked it, used to sing it a lot."  
  
The Doctor nodded, his expression giving Fitz no clue what the other man was thinking. Fitz suddenly wondered if the Doctor even remembered what had happened to his mother in 1963. He stopped playing, his fingers aching.  
  
"How'd you hear me playing that anyway?"  
  
The Doctor looked at him in surprise. "Didn't you know? This room must have a speaker system linked to the rest of the TARDIS; Anji and I can always hear when you're playing in here. It was merely a matter of tracking you down."  
  
"Oh." Fitz felt his face flush. "Sorry, I didn't realize..."  
  
"It's all right," the Doctor assured him with a gentle smile. "Anji hasn't complained to me, and I certainly don't mind listening to you play and sing."  
  
"Thanks," Fitz replied with a wan half-smile of his own. "Any other requests?" he went on after a while, half-jokingly, uncomfortable with the silence that had fallen between them. That cigarette kept seeming like a better and better idea. He needed something to soothe his suddenly jangled, unhappy nerves.  
  
"Something quiet," the Doctor mused, not seeming to catch his companion's uneasiness. "Simon and Garfunkel? Something of the Beatles?"  
  
Fitz found his fingers picking out the melody to "Kathy's Song" without his having to consciously think about it. They moved onto a haunting, gentle version of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" and then "All Things Must Pass," followed by the lonely "Bookends." Ftiz sang along, berating himself when he forgot a verse of "All Things..." The Doctor sat quietly throughout, his eyes closed, absorbing the music with a peaceful, nonurgent air that Fitz rarely got to see. He found himself also relaxing, sliding into the contemplative, slightly melancholy mood the music required. Oddly, his fingers kept wanting to play "Look to the Rainbow" again, and at last he allowed himself to run through the chorus a couple times, since that was the only part of the song he actually remembered very clearly.  
  
The Doctor's eyes fluttered open as Fitz gradually let his guitar and voice fall silent. "We should be landing soon," the Time Lord said, his tone conversational, as if he were continuing a talk he'd been having with Fitz for the past hour or two. "Hopefully we'll be on Earth or some colony that sells cigarettes."  
  
Fitz flushed again. The Doctor glanced at his friend's face quickly and grinned, slapping the younger man on his shoulder. "It's all right," he said, bounding up with his usual enthusiastic energy. "We all have our bad habits. I seem to recall it took me quite some time to give up smoking myself--" His words ground to a halt as he stared into some distance Fitz couldn't even fathom. Fitz waited, staring down at his acoustic guitar, incapable of breaking the tense silence. He should have been used to these breaks by now, these juddering stops that overcame the Doctor occasionally, but he wasn't.  
  
The Doctor shook himself. "We should be landing soon," he repeated quietly. "I'll go inform Anji before heading back to the console room." He was about to sweep out of the room when he paused to turn back to his companion, still seated on the floor and not catching his eye. "Thank you for playing those songs, Fitz. It's been a while since I'd heard them. And you really are quite good."  
  
Fitz looked up, a crooked and wry smile on his face. "Thanks Doc," he said. "It was my pleasure."  
  
The Doctor grinned back happily before heading out of the room, the large and grand double doors swinging shut behind him. Fitz stayed where he was, an odd expression on his face as he tried to work out the tangle of emotions he was feeling and failed. It was always the way of things. He never was very good with emotions anyway.  
  
He took his last cigarette out of his right jeans pocket, his lighter out of the other one. With a reverence deserving it, he lit the end of the ciggie and took a long, soothing drag on it. He left the cigarette dangling from his lips as he again placed his hands over his guitar, fingers finding chords and the melody once more.  
  
It really had been a big fave of his mum's. She'd hummed it all the time, so much so that it'd gotten caught in Fitz's head too. He'd imagined a rainbow he could follow, follow it until it lead him somewhere else that was better. He'd always been finding ways out of his life. He'd never really considered what fellow he might have to follow to get away, though.  
  
He took another quick drag on the ciggie, then tried to figure out what the hell he could do with it in this richly appointed room. At last he gave up and dropped it on the carpet, putting it out with his shoe. He tried to shove the remains back into the cigarette box, but he wasn't sure how successful he was. At last he stood up, the guitar slung over his back as he headed out of the ballroom and back to his bedroom. He would put the guitar away before heading out to whatever new adventure the Doctor had found for them. And as he walked down the corridor, he sang under his breath.  
  
"Look, look! Look to the rainbow / follow it over the hill and stream / Look, look! Look to the rainbow / follow the fellow who follows a dream." 


End file.
